what the veterans down there called the desert, but he had spent considerable time contemplating the brown wastes around the infantry base depot. and to his continual amazement, being a man who had always thought trees and lakes and mountains important, he loved them. possibly it was their geometric barrenness. perhaps in may when conditions were drier and hotter he would not have loved them so well, the lone and level sands stretching far away. he remembered shelley's traveler from an antique land which could certainly have been egypt. there, as they neared cairo, were the three great pyramids punctuating the perfect line of the horizon like an ancient geometry lesson. still, for all its flatness, the greenness of the delta would have been -- if he could be allowed for a moment to consider the unthinkable -- an unbelievably sight to the africa corps should they ever see it. this is a good war out here in that respect he wrote home a few days later. he has a lush, green land as goal, and we have our goal; ever west which is the direction of home and the traditional american direction. he h